Malaysia’s Humiliation return with their 10^th long player and singer, Bear Bee recently informed me what a special recording this was for them.  Being around a decade now and releasing an album each year they wanted to make Parallel Chains of Command extra special.  Humiliation has never had a title track for any of their albums.  They corrected that quickly by approaching this album with a creative out of the box method that is quite original.  Every brand-new song on this album is named after each one of their full-length albums.  Additionally, each title track is in chronological order of its release.  Pretty sick concept.

Humiliation’s war-themed death metal lyrics with music heavily influenced by: Bolt Thrower/Hail of Bullets/Asphyx, Six Feet Under (early) and Obituary and maybe a little Autopsy, continues with this release.  The band is comfortable with their brand of death metal and are not here to reinvent the wheel.  They are here strictly to write heavy old school death metal and make it memorable.  I raved about their last album, Regiment as I felt that was one of the stronger of Humiliation’s releases and Parallel Chains of Command is right on par with their previous album.

“Dawn of Warfare” starts things off with a very heavy down-tuned riff and the song is mid-paced.  The double bass comes in nice and then the simple drumbeat pushed the song forward and Bear comes in with his raspy snarl alongside the double bass action.  Part of the riff sound like something off Bolt Thrower’s Warmaster era album.  The nice audible bass guitar is once again present creating that thick under current of heaviness.  This may be the slowest track Humiliation has ever opened an album with.  The song gradually does pick up speed and Bear growls out the song title as the song goes into a nice fast part.  The song slows back down and then speeds up again once the chorus hits.  The tempo shifts really make this a dynamic track.  “From Strength to Strength” has a Holy Shit part right at the beginning.  Real old school death thrash beat circa 1989 starts immediately.  One of my favorite moments on this release.  Excellent and memorable guitar riffing once again permeates through speakers to crunch your bones and muscles with the tank like heaviness that then goes on to cause further damage by creating sinkhole clusters in and around the neighborhood.  Nice doomy approach at the end as well.  Dripping with vintage Autopsy filth.

Battalion was an album where the band really experimented with the Asphyx doom/death style and pulled it off remarkably well.  Therefore, the song “Battalion”, while not really getting super doomy, has a little bit of that Asphyx mid-paced crawl.  I like the stop and start parts with the guitar and the song has a bit of a jumpiness feel to it.  Some of the guitar riffing I definitely hear The Rack creeping in.   “Under the Siege of Invasion” has quite the Bolt Thrower homage to it.  Guitar riffs “borrowed” from The IVth Crusade and Warmaster albums.  You will hear the opening sound exactly like “Spearhead” and then it goes right into “Cenotaph”.  Honestly this opening is fucking brilliant and heavy.  So yeah expect nothing less than Bolt Thrower worship on this song.  The title track of this album closes things out and “Parallel Chains of Command” is a dynamite closer.  Super heavy and fast riffing in the beginning with some of Mudon’s fastest double bass action going on.  This would be an excellent song to get into the pit for.  The song slows down to a crawl and the slower doomier moments are terrific. The guitar solo towards the end caught me off guard and is an added little bonus as well as how the song ends really fast with the double pounding.

As I stated above this is one of the best Humiliation albums and they once again deliver on making a heavy and memorable album.  Again, their forward-thinking approach with each new song being named for each one of their full length’s is very creative and I truly appreciate them doing this.  Production is well done; no instrument is buried and all the Humiliation nuances are there in all their heaviness.  It would be interesting to see if Humiliation ever had a production through let’s say, Dan Swano, what the expansive nature of Humiliation’s sound could reach?  The 8-panel booklet is well designed, packaged with lyrics and a band photo.  Great black and white cover and the parachutes are just awesome looking. Parallel Chains of Command is an awesome Humiliation album.  Get it now!

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